The Best Sinkhole In Florida

You wouldn`t think a hole in the ground would qualify as a tourist attraction, but the Devil`s Millhopper has been drawing the curious for more than a century.

The sinkhole lies just outside Gainesville. It`s been a favorite spot for University of Florida students and visiting parents for years. Today the hole in the ground is called the Devil`s Millhopper State Geological Site. That means you now have a wooden stairway, instead of a dirt path, leading down into the sink. It also means you are no longer free to root around for fossilized shark`s teeth. The state wants you to leave its fossils alone.

Formed at least a thousand years ago, the Millhopper was showing up as a Gainesville attraction in tourist guidebooks as early as the 1800s. According to one book, tourists arriving in the area by train could rent buggies ``at a reasonable price at the livery stable of Hon. J.B. Dell.``

Some early visitors even sent out postcards, extolling the wonders of the Millhopper. This picture was made from an early colored postcard, produced in New York, printed in Germany, and mailed by a lad named ``Don`` to a girlfriend in nearby Williston in 1908.

Springs flowing from its sides keep the sink cool, wet and luxuriant with plants and animals which seem to have come from a world hundreds of miles to the north. Among them are orchids, violets and giant ferns that are not found anywhere else in Alachua County. More than 100 feet deep and 500 feet across, the ancient sinkhole is shaped like a giant funnel, or better yet like a hopper into which grain is poured for milling (hence the name).

In the last 25 years, roughly a thousand new sinkholes have been reported in Florida, says Barry F. Beck, director of the Florida Sinkhole Research Institute in Orlando. The most famous is the Winter Park sinkhole, which swallowed a three-bedroom home, city swimming pool and five vehicles when it opened in 1981.